| Preston Smith | |
 |
|
|
40th Governor of Texas
|
|
|---|---|
| In office January 21, 1969 – January 16, 1973 |
|
| Lieutenant | Ben Barnes |
| Preceded by | John Connally |
| Succeeded by | Dolph Briscoe |
|
|
|
| Born | March 8, 1912 Williamson County, Texas |
| Died | October 18, 2003 (aged 91) Lubbock, Texas |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Profession | Politician |
Preston Earnest Smith (March 8, 1912 – October 18, 2003) was a Democratic governor of Texas from 1969 to 1973, who earlier served as the lieutenant governor from 1963 to 1969.
Contents |
Early life
Smith was born into a tenant farming family of 13 children in Williamson County near Austin. The family later moved to Lamesa, the seat of Dawson County on the Texas South Plains, where Smith graduated from Lamesa High School in 1928. He thereafter graduated from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in Lubbock and built a movie theater business by the middle 1940s.
Political career
Smith was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1944 and then to the Texas State Senate in 1956. He won the Senate seat by defeating in the primary the incumbent Kilmer B. Corbin, the father of actor Barry Corbin. In 1962, Smith was elected lieutenant governor, and then in 1968 he was elected governor, a position he held from 1969 to 1973. He succeeded the popular Democratic Governor John B. Connally, Jr., who later switched to the Republican Party. To win the governorship, Smith first defeated Don Yarborough in the 1968 Democratic runoff election. Two other candidates—Dolph Briscoe, a large landholder from Uvalde in the Texas Hill Country, and former Attorney General Waggoner Carr—were eliminated in the primary.
Smith then twice defeated Republican nominee Paul W. Eggers, a tax attorney from Wichita Falls and later Dallas, and a close friend of U.S. Senator John G. Tower. In the high-turnout general election of 1968, Smith received 1,662,019 ballots (57 percent) to Eggers' 1,254,333 (43 percent). In the low-turnout general election of 1970, Smith, who had been unopposed in the Democratic primaries, received 1,197,726 votes (53.6 percent) to Eggers' 1,037,723 (46.4 percent). Smith's terms were still two years each. The state switched to four-year terms in 1974.
Smith was embroiled in the Sharpstown scandal stock fraud scheme of 1971 and 1972, which eventually led to his downfall. Smith lost his third-term bid for the governorship of Texas to Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde in the Democratic primary in 1972. He ran a distant fourth in the primary, behind Briscoe, women's activist Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Corpus Christi, and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes.
Later life and attempted political comeback
In 1974, Smith joined banker Stanton Leon Koop (1937-2008), a native of Pampa, in forming the West Texas Savings Association in Lubbock. In 1986, Koop moved to Dallas, where he was affiliated with Great Western Mortgage Company, until his retirement in 1994.
In 1978, at the age of sixty-six, Smith again entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary against his intraparty rival, Governor Briscoe. Both Smith and Briscoe lost in the primary to former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hill, who in turn was narrowly defeated in the general election by Republican Bill Clements
Toward the end of his life, Smith worked as a political liaison officer for Texas Tech University. After his death in Lubbock, the airport was renamed in 2004 in his memory as Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport.
Smith termed himself a "conservative Democrat"; although he was generally supportive of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, he refused to support his party's nominees for president in 1980 and for governor in 1982. Instead of voting to reelect President Jimmy Carter and Mark White in the gubernatorial race, Smith cast his ballot for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clements, respectively.
Smith died in Lubbock on October 18, 2003, and is interred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
References
- Kinch, Jr., Sam; Procter, Ben (1972). Texas Under a Cloud: Story of the Texas Stock Fraud Scandal. Jenkins.
External links
- Programs for people, by Preston Smith, published 1973, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
- http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/020508/obi_243811655.shtml
- Papers, 1930-1975 and undated, in the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University
| Texas House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Hop Halsey |
Member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 119 (Lubbock) 1945–1951 |
Succeeded by Waggoner Carr |
| Texas Senate | ||
| Preceded by Kilmer B. Corbin |
Texas State Senator from District 28 (Lubbock) 1957–1963 |
Succeeded by H. J. “Doc” Blanchard |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Ben Ramsey |
Lieutenant Governor of Texas 1963–1969 |
Succeeded by Ben F. Barnes |
| Preceded by John Connally |
Governor of Texas 1969-1973 |
Succeeded by Dolph Briscoe |
|
||||||||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
